Friday, December 28, 2007

That Was The Year That Was Pt 2

 

# 1422

 

 

Continuing with our end of year review, we begin with March, 2007 and continue through the month of May.  These are only some of the highlights. Many reports are omitted.

 

MARCH

 

During this third month of 2007 our focus was constantly changing from Indonesia to Egypt and back again.   Luckily, while Egypt reported a large number of cases, the mortality rate dropped drastically.

 

 

 

  • March 1st: Myanmar livestock authorities on Thursday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in the capital Yangon but failed to inform their own people.

 

 

  • March 4 (Bloomberg) -- A second case of human bird flu is suspected in Laos, only a week after confirmation of the Southeast Asian country's first case, according to the World Health Organization and government authorities.  Her condition is reported to be Stable, but the within hours she dies.

 

  • Also on March 4th, the UK's Pandemic plans and assumptions are printed in the TimesOnline. According to the article, the UK is expecting, in a worse case scenario, up to 400,000 deaths during a pandemic. (That number will almost double in later `worst case' estimates)

 

 

  • March 6th: After a bad run of fatalities in Egypt late last year and early this year, several involving a Tamiflu resistant form of the H5N1 virus, Egypt now is reporting the second `cure' in a row.  This time, of a 4-year-old girl who was first reported to have been infected in late February.

 

 

  • March 7th: Bird flu has struck a poultry market in the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa, prompting the culling of nearly 7,000 birds, the government said today.

 

  • March 08 :LAB ACCIDENT : Two scientists exposed to bird flu after sharing a faulty lab-suit are being monitored while another has been given the all-clear.

 

  • March 8 (Reuters) - South Korea confirmed on Thursday its seventh outbreak in the past several months of highly virulent bird flu, despite a mass culling and other measures to prevent the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain.

 

  • March 8: The 15 year-old-student from Laos is the second person to die from H5N1 in that nation.

 

 

  • March 9th: HANOI - Vietnamese health workers Friday moved to contain a bird flu outbreak in the capital Hanoi as the H5N1 virus spread to a fifth location within three weeks, in the country’s southern Mekong Delta.

 

  • Mar 9  The deadly bird flu virus is spreading into southern provinces of impoverished, landlocked Laos after outbreaks near Vientiane, a government spokesman said on Friday.

 

  • March 10 (KUNA) -- The 24th human case infected with bird flu was recorded Saturday, when an Egyptian child was diagnosed positive of the disease this evening by health officials.

 

 

  • March 13th: The war of words continues:  JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia will not share bird flu samples with the World Health Organization without a legally binding agreement promising the virus won't be used to develop an expensive commercial vaccine, the health minister said Tuesday.

 

 

  • CAIRO, March 14 (Reuters) - A ten-year-old Egyptian girl has tested positive for bird flu, becoming the 25th human case in the country, a World Health Organisation official said on Wednesday.

 

NOTE: I was offline and traveling for 8 days and therefore had no updates between March 16th and March 24th

 

  • CAIRO, March 25 (KUNA) -- A three-year-old Egyptian girl is being treated for bird flu, the 27th case of the deadly virus in the country, the health ministry announced on Sunday.

 

  • March 27th:  JAKARTA (Reuters) - A teenager and a 22-year-old woman have died from suspected bird flu in Indonesia, a health ministry official said on Tuesday. Both had tested positive for the H5N1 virus after an initial test, but officials were awaiting the result of a second test.

 

  • CAIRO, March 27 (Reuters) - CAIRO, Egypt: An Egyptian woman and two children were reported infected with a virulent strain of bird flu Tuesday, bringing to 30 the total number of Egyptians to be diagnosed with the disease since last year.

 

 

  • March 28th: BEIJING (AP) -- A student has died from bird flu in eastern China, state media reported Thursday.The 16-year-old boy from Bengbu city in the eastern Anhui province died from the H5N1 bird flu virus on Tuesday night, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the provincial health department

 

 

  • March 30th: JAKARTA (AFP) - An Indonesian doctor who fell ill after treating patients suffering from the deadly bird flu virus was improving, a fellow doctor said Friday. 

 

  • CAIRO, March 31 (Reuters) - A third Egyptian child has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the number of human cases in Egypt to 32, state news agency MENA said on Saturday.

 

APRIL

 

Indonesia and Egypt continued to be hot spots during the month of April.

 

  • April 1st : Bandung, Kompas - the Doctor who was assigned in the Handsome Hospital Sadikin the Primary School (29) was stated by the bird flu negative.  He could become the centre of attention because of experiencing the sign suspect bird flu after treating the positive patient bird flu.

 

  • April 1st: According to the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO) of the WHO (World Health Organization), the 4 year-old boy diagnosed with H5N1 yesterday is the sibling of case # 28, a 6-year old girl who tested positive 5 days ago.

 

  • April 2nd: DHAKA - Bird flu spread to five more farms in Bangladesh over the weekend, the health ministry said on Monday, despite culling of thousands of chickens to control the outbreak.

 

 

  • JAKARTA, April 4 (Reuters) - A Jakarta housemaid who had looked after a pet eagle has died from bird flu, marking Indonesia's 72nd confirmed death from the virus, a health ministry official said on Wednesday.

 

  • April 5th: Much confusion surrounds the test results of 4 Bangladeshi workers in Kuwait.  Their initial tests reportedly were positive for bird flu, while a second round was negative.

 

  • April 5th: Although their count is not officially recognized by the WHO (World Health Organization), based on local confirmations, Indonesia has now tied Vietnam for the largest number of cases of human infection at 93.  If the case reported earlier today from Solo is confirmed, they will surpass that.

 

  • April 5th: CAIRO (Reuters) - A two-year-old Egyptian girl has tested positive for bird flu, becoming the 33rd human case in the Arab country, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported on Thursday.

 

  • April 6 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodian Ministry of Health confirmed Friday that a 13-year-old girl from Ponhea Kreak district in Kampong Cham province, which borders Vietnam, died of bird flu on Thursday.  This has been the seventh victim of the epidemic for the kingdom.

 

  • April 8th: A 15-year-old girl in Cairo has been diagnosed with bird flu, the 34th person in Egypt to be infected with the disease, the health ministry said on Sunday.

 

  • CAIRO, April 11 (Reuters) - A 15-year-old Egyptian girl who tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus has died in hospital, bringing the number of deaths from the disease in Egypt to 14, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

 

  • April 14th: Over the past 10 days there have been rumors, and newspaper articles, about suspected human cases in Nigeria.   The latest of these was reported by the VOA, and is detailed here.  Nigerian authorities are denying these stories, claiming they are `speculations'  that have been disproven by laboratory testing.

 

 

  • April 17th: WASHINGTON (AP) -- A bird flu vaccine won federal approval for the first time Tuesday as a stopgap measure against a potential pandemic until more effective vaccines can be developed.

 

  • April 20th: BEIJING - China is preparing to send updated virus samples from human bird flu cases to the World Health Organization, state media reported Friday, days after the WHO said it hadn't received any for a year.

 

 

  • LONDON, April 27 (Reuters) - A new kind of seasonal flu vaccine made in cell culture, rather than chicken eggs, and which could be quickly mass-produced in the event of a pandemic was endorsed by Europe's drugs watchdog on Friday

 

MAY

 

By the end of April the mad rush of human cases and poultry outbreaks of the previous three months had begun to slow. Still, there was a bit of a shocker left for the last week of May, when H7N2 appeared on a UK farm and infected a handful of people and Vietnam saw their first human fatality in 18 months.  

 

 

  • May 01, 2007 (Computerworld) -- The U.S. government's watchdog agency warned Tuesday that the country's financial markets haven't finished planning for a potential flu pandemic and recommended that federal banking and securities regulators set deadlines for completing the work.

 

  • May 2 (Reuters) - Ghana's first case of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed by local laboratories and a U.S. naval laboratory in Egypt, a World Health Organisation official said on Wednesday.

 

  • May 7 (Reuters) - An Indonesian woman has died from bird flu, a health ministry official said on Monday, taking the country's human death toll to 75.

 

  • May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said today that the Chinese government is providing little information about it, or about the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused deaths and illnesses in other animals.The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

 

 

  • May 8th: Should physicians be forced to care for the sick? Should people be compensated for quarantines? When should civil liberties be compromised for the good of the whole? These issues and more were part of a special conference looking at the ethics and edicts of handling epidemics.

 

  • GUANGZHOU, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese epidemiologists have discovered that a mysterious pig epidemic spreading throughout south China's Guangdong province is an outbreak of an infectious disease commonly known as "blue ear disease".   The FAO Believes, if this is correct, that this may be a new, more pathogenic mutation of the disease.

 

  • May 10th: The Defense Department's "Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza," which was posted Wednesday on a  Pentagon website, lays out guidelines and planning assumptions for US military services and combatant commands

 

 

  • HANOI, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's central Nghe An province, which detected an outbreak among fowls in early May, has faced a new one, a local veterinary official told Xinhua on Sunday.

 

  • May 15: OTTAWA - There is concern in the Ontario health community that many health-care workers will not show up for work if a mass influenza outbreak strikes because the province does not promise them financial compensation if they become ill or die as a result of providing care to infected patients.

 

  • May 15th: The Federal Health Office has issued a list of personal hygiene guidelines for the Swiss population in the event of a bird flu pandemic among humans.The main recommendation is for members of the public to stock up on 50 protective masks each, which are available in shops for a few francs.

 

  • May 16th: The WHO catches Up- WHO can now confirm 15 additional cases, including 13 deaths of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza that occurred in Indonesia from the end of January 2007 up to the present and has updated its table of confirmed human cases accordingly.

 

 

 

 

  • May 23rd: A 5-year old Indonesian girl, who died on last Thursday, was positively infected by avian influenza, bringing the total death to 77, health Ministry said in Jakarta Wednesday.

 

  • May 24 :Tests are being carried out for possible bird flu on dead birds in north Wales. Deliveries to an unnamed country estate in rural Denbighshire were being turned away, the Daily Post website said. A Welsh Assembly Government spokeswoman said: "We are investigating a notifiable disease in birds at a location in north Wales. Reports are not confirmed and tests are ongoing."

 

  • May 24:A case of bird flu in north Wales has been confirmed by experts.Doctor Christianne Glossop, Wales' Chief Veterinary Officer, said the strain is H7N2 low pathogenic avian influenza, which is different from the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain currently circulating in Asia.

 

  • May 25th: Four people have tested positive for for bird flu after an outbreak of the virus on a north Wales farm, the Health Protection Agency confirmed today. Dr Christianne Glossop, Chief Veterinary Officer for Wales, previously said it was not the most dangerous H5N1 strain but H7N2 low pathogenic avian influenza.

 

  • May 26 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Health has confirmed a new human case of bird flu, the ministry announced on its website Saturday.     A 19-year-old man surnamed Cheng, who is a soldier in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is now receiving treatment at an army hospital, the ministry said.

 

  • May 30th: JAKARTA, May 30 (Reuters) - A 45-year-old Indonesian man from central Java has died of bird flu, a health ministry official said on Wednesday.  The man from Grobogan died on Monday after being hospitalised on May 17, Joko Suyono of the ministry's bird flu centre said by telephone.

 

  • May 31st: The number of people with symptoms of bird flu rose to 13 in Wales yesterday. The National Public Health Service (NPHS) for Wales last night said these 13 have – or have had – flu-like symptoms or conjunctivitis.
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